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A review by misshappyapples
The Light of Paris by Eleanor Brown
3.0
This book took me a little while to get into. I was initially very turned off by the main character, who seemed to accept all sorts of emotional abuse from her lame duck of a husband with a meek smile and regrets of giving up anything that made her happy but with no inclination to get them back. That changed, of course, and by the end I even sort of respected her.
Madeleine and Margie are two women living similar lives seventy-five years apart. In 1924, five years after her debut, Margie finds herself still unmarried and increasingly without prospects. But when her selfish cousin needs a chaperon for a European tour Margie is enlisted for the job. In Paris she's finds a whole new way of life, one she doesn't ever want to give up. In 1999 Margie's granddaughter, Madeleine, is unhappy in her marriage to an austere businessman in Chicago. But when she goes home for a visit to the midsized city of Magnolia, where she grew up, she finds out there's much more to the town than she ever knew. Soon she finds her grandmother's journals and realizes there's far more to life than what she was conditioned to expect.
The theme of this novel was living the life that you want to live and not accepting the repressed expectations of those around you. Oh boy was that the theme. No theme has ever been more obvious. And for Margie's storyline it made a little sense. The twenties were an interesting time in history because Europe had just been through something that changed everything and the United States was riding high on the stock market, the end of the Gilded Age, and our first taste of global superiority (warranted or not). Things were changing and Margie was attempting to change with the times and meeting resistance from her traditionalist parents. Madeleine, on the other hand, didn't have much of an excuse. Sure, she was trying to please her family, but I just can't understand why anyone would live the way she lived and not rebel.
Another thing that bothered me was the characterization of Paris. It felt like the author had read books and watched movies that romanticized Paris and put all those tropes and cliches straight into the book. Now, don't get me wrong, all those cliches are true. In fact, I read this book because it had Paris in the title and when I went there for the first time I fell rapidly and consumingly in love with it. Everything is better in Paris. But, there's a lot more to Paris than cafes and baguettes and dashing men. Adding those details might have helped make this Paris real, instead of the Paris that exists in the minds of starry eyed American teenagers.
Madeleine and Margie are two women living similar lives seventy-five years apart. In 1924, five years after her debut, Margie finds herself still unmarried and increasingly without prospects. But when her selfish cousin needs a chaperon for a European tour Margie is enlisted for the job. In Paris she's finds a whole new way of life, one she doesn't ever want to give up. In 1999 Margie's granddaughter, Madeleine, is unhappy in her marriage to an austere businessman in Chicago. But when she goes home for a visit to the midsized city of Magnolia, where she grew up, she finds out there's much more to the town than she ever knew. Soon she finds her grandmother's journals and realizes there's far more to life than what she was conditioned to expect.
The theme of this novel was living the life that you want to live and not accepting the repressed expectations of those around you. Oh boy was that the theme. No theme has ever been more obvious. And for Margie's storyline it made a little sense. The twenties were an interesting time in history because Europe had just been through something that changed everything and the United States was riding high on the stock market, the end of the Gilded Age, and our first taste of global superiority (warranted or not). Things were changing and Margie was attempting to change with the times and meeting resistance from her traditionalist parents. Madeleine, on the other hand, didn't have much of an excuse. Sure, she was trying to please her family, but I just can't understand why anyone would live the way she lived and not rebel.
Another thing that bothered me was the characterization of Paris. It felt like the author had read books and watched movies that romanticized Paris and put all those tropes and cliches straight into the book. Now, don't get me wrong, all those cliches are true. In fact, I read this book because it had Paris in the title and when I went there for the first time I fell rapidly and consumingly in love with it. Everything is better in Paris. But, there's a lot more to Paris than cafes and baguettes and dashing men. Adding those details might have helped make this Paris real, instead of the Paris that exists in the minds of starry eyed American teenagers.